


Wise as Serpents and Innocent as Doves

by MumblingSage



Category: Constantine (TV)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Betrayal, Canon Compliant, Crisis of Faith, Deception, F/F, Irony, Kissing, Religious Content, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Vaginal Fingering, Wing Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 03:44:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4904299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MumblingSage/pseuds/MumblingSage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’d told her about a kind of God and Heaven and angels when she was growing up, but nothing like this. Nothing like Imogen, a frail and soft-voiced girl with eyes like honey or amber. Those eyes were completely inhuman but not animal, either. They weren’t frightening, although they could be a hunter’s eyes, raptors’ eyes, accompanied the sweep of those great wings. The softness of those wings kept them from being frightening, even more than Imogen’s soft, shy smile.<br/>She had a lovely smile, Zed thought. Hard to look away from.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wise as Serpents and Innocent as Doves

Inside the minister’s church, a sign read in awkward block letters, _THIS WORLD IS NOT MY HOME._

Zed could sympathize.

She hadn’t seen much of the world growing up, and when she was finally made aware of anything beyond the tiny room her father's cult kept her in, she’d been taught that she was destined to reshape it. When she ran away from that destiny, she’d had to learn fast. But what she learned about how the world worked didn’t always make sense, as if her mind that was open to so much just couldn’t absorb it on the right level. Her art classes made sense. She knew how to draw right from her bones. Learning how to live after the Resurrection Crusade, that took longer.

But she remembered the sign as she watched John gently sit the angel down, then wrap a blanket over her folded wings. Here was someone even farther from home than she was. Just thinking of it made her ribcage feel like a vise.

Zed wondered if what she felt was pity for Imogen, if pity for an angel was ever appropriate. Maybe she felt something even more inappropriate, approaching blasphemy. Envy.

Even if this world wasn’t her home, at least the angel knew where home _was_.

Most of all, though, Zed just felt thrilled. She couldn’t stop staring. Even when they were covered, the wings were so obviously there, physical proof.

She couldn’t stop smiling.

Imogen’s body had felt human—thin, but solid, and so warm when Zed’s hand brushed her bare arm that she seemed feverish.  When her eyes met Zed’s, they had been warm too, and bright. Friendly. Full of grace.

Oh God. _Literally_.

The angel’s presence was such a thrill that it became terrifying. “She’s an angel,” Zed said, pointing as if John couldn’t also see her, and laughter swelled in her throat as if at a cosmic joke.

They’d told her about a kind of God and Heaven and angels when she was growing up, but nothing like this. Nothing like Imogen, a frail and soft-voiced girl with eyes like honey or amber. Those eyes were completely inhuman but not animal, either. They weren’t frightening, although they could be a hunter’s eyes, raptors’ eyes, accompanied the sweep of those great wings. The softness of those wings kept them from being frightening, even more than Imogen’s soft, shy smile.

She had a lovely smile, Zed thought. Hard to look away from. It made her head feel light. Waifish girls weren’t normally Zed’s type (maybe because she had spent a little too much time feeling waifish, a lost girl herself), but when she knew it was just a mask, when she knew that _divinity_ waited beneath it…

She was terrified by how much it thrilled her.

She couldn’t look away, and she couldn’t keep away, either.

After John finished setting up his protection spell with a garden hose, Zed let him walk back to the impromptu camp around the church alone. Maybe he’d appreciate the time for thought. He tried to pass off angels as old news to him, as routine, but she couldn’t believe it.

She stopped at the barn door, looking in. Imogen sat at the far wall, the plaid blanket covering her white dress and her wings. The thought still made Zed's mouth dry. She was going to make herself turn away, take a different route back to the church, when the angel’s head turned suddenly in her direction.

“Uh…hello.” The word sounded too loud and too weak at once, unsteady, disturbing the chapel-like peace beneath the high eaves. But Imogen smiled at her again.

“Hello.” _Her_ voice seemed to echo, sweet and swelling. Filling the space and filling, too, a space around Zed’s lungs that hadn’t quite felt empty before, above a pounding heart that pushed at her ribcage. It was hard, so hard to breath. No wonder she had trouble speaking, too.

She came inside, came closer, because that at least was easy. Like falling towards her, this winged girl a center of gravity. This _angel_. A minister of Heaven. A servant of God.

She had to be, right? And if she was smiling at Zed, talking to Zed…

Of course, she reminded herself, trying to find solid ground, apparently an angel talked to John Constantine; they weren’t proof of sainthood. Unless sainthood was very, very different from anything she ever imagined.

But speaking of John’s angel—“I’m not interrupting, am I?” she asked, gesturing to the air roughly on Imogen’s left, where Manny had seemed to be.

“Oh, no.” Despite the echo, Imogen’s voice sounded warm, almost fond. “He didn’t want to leave me alone, but he has other charges to look after.”

“Well—I can keep you company. If you don’t want to be alone.”

“Thank you.”

“My name’s Zed.” She dropped her head, brushing a lock of hair behind one ear. “Maybe you already knew that.”

“Hello, Zed.” Her name rang like a clarion bell.

Zed breathed out in relief. It wasn’t the minor awkwardness of the introduction that had worried her—she hadn’t been entirely certain, until now, whether the angel would greet her instead as _Mary_.

She sat down next to Imogen. “Would you like to talk? Or we can…”

Imogen smiled. “I would love to talk to you.”

“Thank you. That’s so… It’s so…” She swallowed hard to clear her throat. She couldn’t think how to explain what she needed to learn. And Imogen continued smiling, watching her as if she had all the time in the world, which she didn’t—but what she had she seemed to offer ungrudgingly, and it was her patience as much as the internal pressure, the aching need to _know_ , that made Zed say, “I have visions.”

“Yes,” the angel said. It took Zed a few moments of her smile to realize that the angel was gently prompting her.

“I had one of you today, actually. When I touched the preacher. I saw you coming to gather his soul. It must have been the moment before he took your feather, before you fell.”

Imogen’s eyes gleamed, so that they looked suddenly like cool embers. “You saw me falling?” she murmured.

“No.” Zed met her gaze; she didn’t need to close her eyelids to remember what she saw, the sweep of shadow across cold light. “What I mostly saw were your wings.”

Those wings shifted under the blanket. She wondered if she’d made Imogen self-conscious. Yet she couldn’t stop herself from adding, “They were beautiful.”

“Thank you.” Suddenly the angel’s hand settled on hers, paper-light. “This wasn’t the only vision you had?”

“No. They’ve been happening all my life. And I don’t know…” _Why. How._ “What I wanted to ask was, do these visions come from Heaven? Is God sending them to me? Was I chosen…or…if I was, chosen by _who_?”

“Not everyone would be pleased to be chosen by God.”

“I know.” With Zed’s upbringing, she couldn’t help but know. “But it’s better than the alternative.”

“Do your gifts have to come from either Heaven or Hell?”

“I guess not.” No one could stick around John Constantine and his miscellaneous methods for long without learning there was more. Maybe her hopes on the one hand, her fears on the other, had penned her into too narrow a conception of her gifts. “I guess there are places in between…”

“Yes,” the angel said. “I’m just discovering the places in between.”

There was a new abrasion in her tone, not harsh but dry. Showing she was well aware of the understatement. 

Imogen looked down at the floor and swept one hand through the dust and straw. A corner of her mouth pulled as if in disgust or horror. A shudder ran through her shoulders, and then she winced.

“Hey, are you okay?” Stupid question. Of course she wasn’t. She was trapped down here, in this place between. Dying.

Zed took Imogen’s hand, curled her fingers around it gently. “We’re going to fix this. When John’s out there, fighting evil, he’ll do whatever it takes to protect people, or save them, and…” She thought, then, about what _whatever it takes_ could mean, and the reassuring babble faltered. She searched for something else to say. Could she promise, _When I’m out there, fighting evil, I’ll also do whatever it takes?_ Wasn't she fighting evil? Was that the point of her visions?

She had come to a dying angel to seek help in her faith, not so much in God, in Heaven, in any divine plan, as in herself. Because she didn’t have it yet.

But she would do what she could.

So Zed didn’t talk about John’s plans to confront the preacher, or the protective circle he’d cast around the barn, or even her own skills, picked up after way too long on the run, her vigilance and honed reflexes and the moments that terrified even her of pure, competent violence. Much less of her good intentions.

She tried to think instead how to communicate safety, promise protection while giving up on words. Of how her visons would do it if they ever showed something so pleasant. And the best she could come up with was that night in New Orleans, before her gift made it ugly, the moment when Jim Corrigan tried to promise she was safe, and sealed his promise with…

Imogen’s hand felt even warmer against her mouth than it had against her fingers, and as soft as human flesh. Her flame-colored eyes were wide on Zed, but she didn’t pull away. She didn’t seem half as surprised by the kiss as Zed was herself.

Smiling faintly, she raised her other hand and traced Zed’s lips. “It’s not all bad here. Between.”

“Yeah,” Zed breathed against her fingertips. Then she kissed them again, and Imogen held them there, against her kisses, her smile growing wider. With a rustle, the blanket slid from her wings, which tremored and looked like they were about to spread. Zed had never wanted to see anything so much. She lifted her own hands, let them skim over Imogen’s shoulders and cup the back of her head. She didn’t put any pressure there, however much she wanted to urge Imogen’s mouth closer, and she didn’t let herself reach elsewhere, at least not yet. She wasn’t sure it would be permitted.

She had to be careful, too. Imogen’s hair looked like threads of amber silk, but against Zed's palm it felt thin and brittle.

“Is this okay?” Zed asked, still speaking against the fingers over her mouth in a gesture that wasn’t meant to shush her.

The angel’s wings unfolded a little farther as she seemed to consider the question. “Your touch…doesn’t hurt more than anything else,” she said at last. “Everything hurts. But the pain isn’t all bad. Your lips…” She pushed against them, which Zed interpreted, correctly it seemed, as urging another kiss. “They sting. But sweetly. You admire me, Zed?”

She had to nod.

“You desire me?” A smile ghosted over her face, so faint it might have been Zed’s imagination. “Or what I stand for?”

A rustle as her wings rose.

“You,” Zed whispered. “I wouldn’t use you to reach something…beyond…” She didn’t make people into tools, into instruments, into means to an end, however righteous.

“It would be all right if you did.” Imogen’s voice rang in a way no human voice could, as if she were laughing and singing and speaking all at once. “Angels are intended as a medium between humankind and heaven. We are here to serve your needs.”

“I don’t need you to serve me.”

“You’re very sweet to say so.” Imogen grinned, and joy seemed to wash the weakness and pain from her, transforming her into something glorious.

Zed was gaping at her, mouth so wide she could taste each breath. The sunny mustiness of old hay gathered at the back of her throat. That was real—at least she thought it was. _This_ was real.

Her lips on the angel’s, that was real.

And if it hurt, Imogen showed no sign of it. She was open, drawing at Zed, practically drinking her in. Her tongue stroked, pushed, all inexpert, but with a sort of aggressive eagerness that Zed couldn’t deny. Her mouth was sweet—a bright, dry yet intoxicating sweetness, like champagne.

Zed really couldn’t stand champagne.

She felt bad for pulling away, but it had happened by instinct, before she could stop herself. Imogen’s eyebrows rose. Her expression seemed more puzzled than hurt, and more curious than puzzled. As if she was wondering what this meant Zed was going to do next.

What she did was kiss the angel again, more chastely, and then her hands settled on Imogen’s shoulders. Keeping her touch light, mindful of how the flesh beneath it felt thin and frail, she moved over skin left bare by the strange pleated gown, then lower, until her fingertips found something half-unexpected. A knot of muscle, and rising from it, feathers.

“Can I…?”

“Go ahead.”

They flexed as she explored them, spreading wider. But she realized that only after the fact, because in the initial touch her senses opened in a completely different direction.

It was possible for Zed to touch people without spurring a vision, but John, however eloquently he put it, had a point—the gift could be a buzzkill in the sack. She felt about sex almost as strongly as she felt about drugs, that it was too much to handle, and superfluous. Not that she was a virgin. She didn’t want to be, not after she got away. And it was more than acting out, because she enjoyed the intimacy and connection of sex. But she was cautious, never knowing when that intimacy would become too much.

She also didn’t think about that until some time after she touched Imogen's wings.

In the moment, her awareness was absorbed in a feeling of vast space, of light—and darkness too, swirling chiaroscuro that gave her a sensation of moving at great speed. Falling. Flying. Her ears were filled with the whistle of wind, and it seemed to form words she’d never heard before.

Then it had passed, and as she caught up with what had happened in the outside world during the eternity encompassed in that second of touch, she realized what she had thought about sex. While caressing an angel’s wing. That was…

She swallowed. Imogen watched her, and though her wings seemed to shiver beneath Zed’s hands, she wasn’t pulling free.

Well, then.

The vision was gone now. It hadn’t shown her anything to warn her off. If anything the amazing sense of light and freedom, chaos that obliterated thought, that her dazzled psyche somehow interpreted sexually—that had been the opposite of a warning. Beckoning.

She’d already come all this way for a vision. A vision of serpents leading her into temptation. She held back a laugh at the thought, not wanting to confuse Imogen. She still felt protective and careful of her, very aware of how vulnerable the angel was.

But the wings kept unfurling, wider and wider, blocking shafts of light through the barnboard gaps. Their vastness made Zed feel small, and for an instant she felt a deep quiver of anxiety, like a hunted animal seeing the shadow of a hawk. Then it passed. In Imogen’s shadow, she felt better than small, she felt hidden. Secure. Her eyes traced the shape of them—they weren’t really a hunter’s wings. The feathers looked too soft, pale. Dovelike.

They felt soft, too, silken. As her fingers traced over them, they dusted a line of powder from their surface. She thought incongruously of birds taking dust baths, of the marks their wings left behind after a collision with a window, although this stuff seemed much less earthly and the thought of Imogen having a collision was less humorous and more sickening. The dust left no mark on her hands. An impression passed up her veins as if she’d taken a needle intravenously, not an image or smell or taste but somehow all and none of them at once. She lost her breath. She tasted copper, saw its gleam behind her eyelids. Or maybe she had only bitten the inside of her mouth in distraction.

She coached herself to be careful. However Imogen’s wings were, she had no idea how sensitive they could be. Or how fragile. She’d already lost one feather—and they’d get it back, of course they would, but who knew if she could afford to lose another? Plus it would be hard to explain _how_ she lost it.

But the wings were proof. Zed tended to trust the evidence of her senses, one way or another. She’d seen them in the vision when she touched Zachary, she felt them now. Curving around her in a sudden embrace. Bringing her closer to Imogen’s body, which was warm like a human’s body, or even warmer. Hot as the touch of the sun.

Imogen’s eyelashes fluttered before her face. Not coy but sweet. _Your eyes are like doves…_ some poet somewhere had written once. Like her wings were a dove’s, but far vaster and more powerful.

Caught between the power and the softness, between the urge to be gentle and the need to reassure herself that this was real, Zed kissed the angel again, every part of her she could reach—pinions, lips, cheek, and neck. Imogen kissed her back. The embrace of her wings tightened. She didn’t seem experienced enough in physicality to be particularly careful.

Zed had to push, gently, to force her wings back enough to move inside them. She shrugged out of her shirtsleeves, stripping down to her bra. She felt feathers brush against her bare spine. It was an electric jolt.

“Okay?” she asked.

Imogen was smiling. Her wings swept over Zed’s skin once more, and then her hands. As if she wanted to make her shiver like that again. Maybe she did.

Zed wanted it, too.

She was falling back, cushioned by the blanket. Imogen’s body was light in her arms above her, and the white wings arched over them both.

She slipped her hands under the angel’s full, pleated skirt and felt warm, soft skin. She traced Imogen’s legs up to the backs of her thighs. It all felt almost disconcertingly human.

Imogen wiggled, but not to get away. In the process she ground against Zed’s thigh. Her breath caught. So that worked like it did for humans, too.

Her hands brushed Zed’s breasts through her bra, at first gentle, then rougher. Too rough. “Be careful,” Zed murmured.  

She stroked again, this time without so much pressure, and cupped them without her previous tight grasp. Angelic strength lingered, Zed guessed, even in an injured angel. But neither of them should be thinking about that right now. “Still okay?” she asked.

“Oh, yes.” A finger curled between the lattice of bra straps. “Is this all right?”

“Yes!” The very edge of Imogen’s fingernail grazed one nipple, and it didn’t hurt; sensation spread like a firework bursting under her skin.

The wings above them rustled and Imogen laughed softly, shyly. She settled, straddling Zed’s hips, sitting back against her hands where they still rested on her thighs. The skin there felt wet with sweat or something else, a possibility that made Zed blush even though she was fully aware of what they were doing. She followed the track of moisture higher, found a shape of silky slickness. As she traced over it, Imogen sighed. The angel’s fingers curled but didn’t crush; she was still careful.

Her flesh was warm, and it hugged Zed’s fingers with a tight, muscular grip. She traced a circle at her entrance, and the muscles began to relax with a sort of flutter that was mirrored in the tremor of Imogen's wings. Zed’s heart leaped in her throat and down between her legs at the same time. Her pulse hammered until it felt like a stroke of fingers in itself, running through her pubic mound, pressing at her clit, throbbing between her breasts, circling her throat.

Her limbs began to shudder. She was close, just from the texture and heat and closeness of Imogen’s body. She didn’t try to encourage her own response or fight to hold it off; what was happening was so unexpected, and thinking too much about it seemed to risky, to do anything but let it happen.

She swallowed, a little nervous as Imogen’s fingers slid under the waistband of her jeans. They traced a swirling pattern over the front of her panties, a light touch that teased through damp cotton. Then the pressure became firmer. She sighed, squirmed, spread her legs a little more, reaching down to fumble open the buttons and zipper. Imogen made a sound of her own when Zed’s hands left her, short and impatient. So angels could get impatient. Good to know, Zed thought dizzily as her bare skin felt the touch of fingertips. Good to know.

The pad of one finger stroked over her clit, slipping from how wet she was. Then it ran back, down her channel, pressing. Moving quickly, and lacking finesse—not that Zed expected any—but exciting all the same. Clumsiness was forgiveable, and Imogen seemed to be trying not to be too rough. She licked her lips, which Zed suddenly wanted to be kissing again. But her thumb had found Zed’s clit and was teasing it, making words hard to arrange, and she could grab the angel’s shoulders and pull her down to meet her mouth but that might be too abrupt. And then it didn’t matter.

Thoughts of other intimacies paled against the intrusion, welcome but startling nonetheless. Imogen’s fingers were smooth but felt harder than human flesh. Maybe because they weren’t as warm as a human’s would be, as if the feverish heat had faded, as if angelic lust ran cool instead of hot. Maybe because Zed had assumed too much softness from them. 

Imogen made a humming sound as muscles clutched around her. She pulled back, and the sensation made Zed writhe. She was a live nerve, and any touch would help her, she needed every touch. Speaking of touch—she reached up, felt Imogen’s skin through the air-thin fabric of her gown, felt her round breasts and sharp nipples hardening at their peaks. Then moved her hands lower, higher, one over her shoulders and the other around her waist. Not stopping there, too hungry to stop. Tracing her spine, circling the base of one wing and then the other. Exploring hands. Worshipful hands.

She tried to keep her eyes open, tried to take in as much as she could see. The thought came that she might draw this. Fixing every detail in memory and on paper. It would be a tribute—and thanks—and it would be evidence that this had actually happened. That Imogen, dovelike and clumsy and blissful and divine, was real.

But her eyelids kept fluttering as she felt building ecstasy. And Imogen’s face as she slid against Zed’s thigh and Zed’s stroking fingers was almost too bright, too much to bear. As if Zed’s vision saw more, unfolded mere appearance and opened onto a vista she couldn’t take in, couldn’t understand. It was beautiful, she knew that. And powerful almost beyond her comprehension, and dangerous—most beautiful and powerful things were—and it—

Then Imogen was crying out. She wasn’t soft or quiet in orgasm—grinding roughly against her, gripping hard, her head thrown back and a strange hum like crystalline thunder rising from her throat. Obviously she had no experience holding it in. Or faking it.

Yes, Zed was proud of that. And then she was swelling into her own climax, her clit pulsing under Imogen’s thumb and her inner muscles contracting around her fingers. It was bliss on a basic, flesh-and-blood level. About as good as a human could feel, inside and out. Not just the physical pleasure but the comfort of Imogen’s body and wings, and the pride Zed felt and the affection that seemed to flow between them. She was accepted by an angel. Loved by an angel.

Amid all the darkness, the scariness, the ugliness of Zed Martin’s world, there could be something good.

Quickly, quietly, and almost shyly, they got dressed again and helped each other shake out crumbled pleats in fabric, rearrange hair. Zed would have helped smooth ruffled feathers but they folded away already. Imogen’s small smile curved into pursed lips with which she pecked Zed’s cheek. Then she sank onto the blanket in the straw again, pale but looking not exhausted so much as languid.

Only as she stumbled away did Zed realize she hadn’t received an answer to her question.

***

At any moment now someone—one of her ghouls, most likely—would return her feather to her, and then the fun could really begin.

And the dying would stop, which Imogen had to admit would be a relief.

In the meantime, she passed the minutes by chatting the angel Manny into temptation. It killed time. Like orgasms did.

Sex was not nearly enough to compensate for a mortal form, yet she had always been curious (the _sins_ mortals got led into for it!) and the human girl had been surprisingly seductive. Not on purpose or manipulatively so—she didn’t seem to want anything more than to be friends. And something in Imogen couldn’t help responding to that urge for affection and reassurance.

Or the—not kindness; mortals were so much weaker that they couldn’t possibly show kindness to her kind—call it reverence. Yes, Imogen liked being worshiped. She could even enjoy it from creatures she despised. Yet she felt less contempt for Zed than for many others.

Imogen had sensed a bit of the preacher’s power clinging around her, apparently from the time they'd touched and sparked a vision, and she disliked seeing it on Zed. The man stank. Some of it was cloyingly familiar. After all, she and Zachary had both been sent to hell for ending a life. Zachary managed it by being incompetent, careless, selfish. Imogen had killed one of her charges out of frustration.

She wasn’t at all nostalgic, but she remembered some of the sweetness of those days, when she loved humans with a tenderness so strong she could almost feel it as if it had taken flesh. Her heart had been full then and inevitably sore. Because she couldn't help them however much she tried. They wouldn't let her help. The one thing she could not forgive was the refusal of the broken to be fixed. Then they failed to fix themselves, again and again. Might as well bring the farce to a stop.

Afterwards she sometimes questioned whether it had been worth the consequences. Time spent among the damned was enough to drain anyone’s remaining faith in Creation. Zed was refreshing after that, certainly. Imogen might have avoided hell if more of her charges were like her—not selfish, careless or cruel, and not incompetent either.

Not incompetent at all. Because there she was, running for the barn as swiftly as if demons were after her. Not demons, ghouls. The creatures who should have been fetching Imogen's lost feather. Yet Zed carried it, firmly but gently in one hand. What an unexpected surprise. What a sweet one.

Yes, if more of humankind were like Zed, perhaps Imogen would not feel the urge to wipe the world clean.

In any event, the pleasure she had found with her had been a pleasant distraction. Like sunlight, it made embodiment interesting if not worthwhile. Unlike sunlight, it wouldn’t be there once the hosts had reclaimed the earth. And maybe Imogen would miss it, just a little. Unless angels decided to seduce each other? She glanced at Manny, as yet unconvinced by her, but as yet fooled by her disguise, too. It wouldn’t last. Too bad. He was more than beautiful enough for it.

All the same, there was something unique about a mortal like Zed who could at once have both free will _and_ faith. Even Imogen didn’t have faith now. But she felt…optimistic.

As her body reclaimed the lost feather Zed held against her, she felt more than optimism. It was a sensation impossible to describe, relief and triumph mixing in a way more heady than anything she had ever experienced in all her millennial. The looks on Manny and Zed’s faces were only gilding its exquisiteness.

And then she just needed to make her way past her would-be helpers.

The magician, with his stupid traps, proved difficult. But he had a weakness.

After all, who wouldn’t soften for Zed Martin?

Even Imogen regretted the necessity of crushing her throat.

A moment’s regret wasn’t enough to derail a plan she’d cherished for centuries. She felt it nonetheless, almost savoring the subtleness of the feeling—in as much as angels felt emotion, rather than ideas. It did hurt, but she was used to waiting for pain to pass.

The pain gripping her heart, however—for an instant she truly believed it was Zed’s hand closing around her, squeezing out her life; there was no way a mortal should be capable of it, and yet from Zed, Imogen wouldn’t be surprised—that did not pass away, not until she did, too.

***

John thought the apocalyptic visions she was drawing came from the moment when she had held the angel’s heart. Maybe he was right. But Zed wondered if these glimpses came from earlier. Not from the black blood streaking her palm but from the soft lips against hers, and warm thighs, and bright eyes that were somehow like doves, and an embrace that make her feel accepted, worthy, loved.

The first canvas she filled after returning home, sketched in a frenzy while the bathtub was filling, contained the spread of sweeping wings in charcoal.

She broke two pencils doing it. Each time the contraction of her hand seemed to echo the pounding, the intimate pulse—

Manny had saved her life. At least one angel judged that she was worth keeping alive, and that was something. But right now she wasn’t sure she wanted to meet him after all. For his sake as much as hers.

She wouldn’t want to see any more angels for a while.

Blind faith is dangerous, she knew that. She hadn’t realized how dangerous _wanting_ to believe could be.

She tried to get the taste of champagne out of her mouth, brushing her teeth until she spit pink. And then suddenly, abruptly, it had been gone.

She washed her hands again and again, using a pumice stone and bristle brush on her fingertips and under the nails. They still didn’t feel clean.

Eddie's call at least offered a distraction. She felt bad for disappointing him, and almost sick at the missed opportunity for friendship with another human, intimacy with another mortal. She needed another person she could trust. Or at least who would be fun to hang around with.

But she might not be fit company tonight anyway.

Zed looked across the room at the tracing of wings. She still hadn’t decided if she would shade them black or leave them as they appeared now, white as a dove’s.


End file.
